Grey Wool Dress - Burda 10/2009, 119 B

Description

This dress caught my eye as soon as I opened the Oct 2009 issue of Burda. I was looking for a winter dress design for a while, and this seemed perfect. I am normally 38, but I should have gone for 36, as I found that the finished dress was too wide.

Apart from that, the greatest thing is the pleated front, as with so much fabric going into pleats, it becomes a very warm garment (ant optically makes your chest look bigger!). However, I realised that my fabric choice was not perfect – I should have gone for lighter weight wool fabric. The dress feels lovely, but it is slightly too bulky.

Nevertheless, I loved the design and made my own belt.

Material Notes

Lightweight Wool (preferable!)

Difficulty

Intermediate

Categories

Credits

Love your dress. It looks great on you. I’m making up a muslin of this pattern now. The directions are a little confusing in one spot.
Here is where I got lost:
When you sew the side front/side front skirt panel combo to the center front with the pleats. It says “Stitch abutting lines and pleat fold lines together from upper edges to marking. Baste below marking”. Does this basting get ripped out so the pleat hangs free below the mark like the others? If so how do you sew the seam together below the mark after you’ve taken out the basting?If you understand what I’m talking about please write me back…
Thanks so much!

1 Reply

Yes, that was the tricky bit for me, too. Since I couldn’t make any markings on the fabric itself (and chalk kept coming off!), I had to baste all pleats facing two opposite directions, as per instruction. I then stitched them till the marking. However, when pressed, I could see it would bulk up quite badly if I didn’t fix the pleats properly. So I top-stitched over them vertically, leaving 3mm to the edge of each pleat.

Since English is not my first language, I sometimes have to trust my instinct when following the instructions. In this case I made sure the top stitch seams looked as nice as I could possibly get them to look. However, the whole front of the dress became quite thick (and warm!).

The pleats do hang free bellow that mark where the top stitch ends. There is no seam that joins all the pleats at the bottom horizontally.

I too opted to get the Oct issue with this very dress in mind though I haven’t got around to it yet as there are too many other things waiting to be done ! But I will. It looks very warm and I see that you have worn it as a pinafore, so that must be extra warm !

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